a bit expensive, focal length and aperture covered by many room lenses.

I honestly don't understand how people can say a bad thing about the picture quality of this lens. The introductory price is indeed quite expensive, but now when the price has come down quite a bit the lens has quite a few things going for it.

This lens has excellent contrasty color. The central sharpness is very high with great clarity. It is easily better than 17-40 L and 24-105 L at 24mm.

It also compare quite favorable to my Zeiss 21 2.8 in color and sharpness eventhough they have different focal lengths.

I often go on hiking with this 24 2.8 IS, the 40 pancake and my 70-300L. The kit is relatively light and cover everything I need to shoot nature.

If you have a telephoto such as 70-200 or 70-300, it makes a lot of sense of combine it with the pancake and 24. 2.8 IS. Since all 24-70 2.8 room are heavy and quite expensive meanwhile these two lenses weight about 400g and cost less than 800$. (I bought 24 2.8 IS for 629$ and 40 pancake for 150$). The quality is super, too.

Love the Tamron 24-70 VC. Tamron deserved to be praised for being the first designing a 24-70 f2.8 VC lens, and its image is also super.

It is as sharp wide open at f2.8 as Canon 24-105 at F4. The autofocus is silent and accurate. Price is high by Tamron's standard but it is a bargain compared to Canon and Nikon 24-70 f2.8 counterparts.